


in the break of dawn

by taylorstwice



Series: looking with ocean eyes (prequel : the background stories of what was once there) [2]
Category: ITZY (Band)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, here's some fluff for all the ryuryeongers out there, itzy - Freeform, ryujin whipped from the very first beginning wbk, ryuryeong, second installment of the prequels for looking with ocean eyes, this kind of writing only comes out at midnight i hate my life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 22:40:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29865126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taylorstwice/pseuds/taylorstwice
Summary: Ryujin tries to look and find, something beautiful, something special to see in this world, and she meets her in the break of dawn, red and teary-eyed, but still, she’s the most beautiful she’s ever seen.
Relationships: Lee Chaeryeong/Shin Ryujin
Series: looking with ocean eyes (prequel : the background stories of what was once there) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2195691
Kudos: 8





	in the break of dawn

Ryujin sighs as she continues to walk the empty streets with her worn-out, brown journal filled with unfinished poems, stories and lyrics. The night’s high, the wind traveling with her as she pushes her hands in her pockets, the coldness slipping through the open gaps, chilling her skin.

She looks up as she passes by a convenience store, ducking when the cashier looks in her way.

She can’t have them calling the cops because they saw a minor strolling around the streets at 3 am.

No.

She can’t have that.

Not when she hasn’t found something to motivate her.

Not when she hasn’t found someone to motivate her.

Though Seoul is considered the most beautiful city in South Korea, Ryujin can’t find anything beautiful in the place.

Nothing _tugs_ her heartstrings every time she takes a walk around, nothing makes her head spin and go into overdrive whenever she watches people pass by her, nothing makes her feel that weird feeling.

And you might be asking, why does she need to feel whatever it was that she’s trying to feel? What is she trying to achieve? What is she desperately wanting to find to the point that she’s wearing nothing under her coat but a shirt and her pants, her tattered shoes, and her journal, adventuring through the streets of Seoul with lost eyes and cold skin, but hopes high as the moon in the sky?

Ryujin, finds inspiration, to make her masterpieces.

Her masterpieces, her poems, her stories, her lyrics, her _life_.

 **“Where are you?”** She lets out in the cold, her own breath saying hello and goodbye to her as she watches it appear and disappear in the ice-cold night.

She’s not like this normally, it’s just that something had told her that she needed to come out tonight.

She had felt that something would change tonight.

She would find something that might change her.

Change her life.

And then, there it was.

There…she was.

Running past her, Ryujin’s muse clad in nothing but a nightgown and slippers, run past the girl and towards the direction of a hill, ignoring the harsh winds as it pushes against her.

Her sobs wrack through the silent night and as guilty as she is, Ryujin finds beauty and art in her.

Ryujin finally found the one she’s been looking for.

She chases after the nameless girl, and with her squinted eyes and in dimly lit streets, Ryujin can see how her muse shivered in the night as every snow falls under the light, making everything look like something Ryujin would imagine as a movie scene.

And Ryujin wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to see more.

One runs away from pain while another chases for light.

Ryujin can’t take her eyes off of the girl as if she’s a firefly in a dark room.

As if she’s the bright yellow in the crowd of black and white.

As if she’s the moon in the starlit sky.

The girl finally stops as she reaches the peak of the hill, overlooking the downtown of Seoul, every building blinking like stars right before her very eyes, yet they do nothing to heal her wounded heart.

Pain grows from the core of her heart, and it spreads through her veins, crawls to her skin, makes her skin numb.

That’s why she’s been fighting off the cold until now.

Physical pain is nothing when you’re hurting deeply inside.

The sky is now more light-blue than a dark blue, and the bits of light sailing across the horizon reminds both of them that a new day is about to start, and one celebrates for her new found hope while the other trembles as she thinks of facing yet another gruesome day.

The girl finally lets tiredness seep in her legs, in her arms, and she plops down on the snow-covered ground, her eyes filling up with tears once again as she remembers her reason for sneaking out and running away.

Life is fucked up for some people.

She wonders why she’s included in them.

As she watched the girl fall on the ground, Ryujin wonders about the reason why she’s crying.

Her heart starts feeling heavy when she hears the familiar sobs she heard earlier. She feels the need to make her stop crying, to comfort her, to do something to make her stop making those heart-breaking sounds.

And so without making her presence noticed, Ryujin moves from a few feet behind the girl to her side, and she’s about to make herself known when she stops.

This girl beside her, is the greatest thing she’s ever seen.

This girl is just…something else.

Entirely something else.

And without even thinking, Ryujin let out her first words for her muse.

 **“You’re…beautiful.”** She says breathlessly, still entranced with how the young girl before glows despite her swollen, red eyes and trembling lips.

Shocked and fear are the first things that the girl had felt when she hears that strange voice coming from beside her, and she had shivered a bit, but she doesn’t let the person know.

She looks up to see a short haired girl looking at her with glazed eyes, expression so…strange she couldn’t tell if she was okay or not.

 **“Who even are you? Stop saying shit and go away.”** The brunette turns away from Ryujin and continues sobbing, hugging her knees to her chest with her arms and hiding her face, the sniffs and the sobs wracking her whole body.

Though pushed away, Ryujin still keeps herself in her place.

 **“Why are you crying?”** She tries to get to the topic, not knowing that it was a very sore one. One that contains fresh pain, one that she had unintentionally touched.

The girl turns and glares at her with her red rimmed eyes. **“I said go away. Why can’t you understand that?”**

Leaving means letting her muse to be alone. To be vulnerable.

To be in pain.

 **“I don’t want you to die.”** Ryujin blurts out.

Those were wrong choice words, she realized it after she had said it, but she can’t take it back now.

**“Why would I die?”**

She can only turn it around.

 **“It’s negative degrees and you’re only wearing a thin nightgown. You’ll freeze to death.”** The serious look on the girl’s face finally makes Ryujin realize that she doesn’t want her around. Still, Ryujin doesn’t want to leave the girl unprotected. She takes off her coat and hands it to the girl. **“I’ll leave if you want me to leave, but at least wear this.”**

After giving the girl her coat and being left with nothing but her pants and her shirt and her journal in hand, Ryujin flashes the girl one last friendly smile and turns around to walk away, feeling her muse’s eyes on her.

 **“What’s your name?”** This makes the short-haired girl turn and look at the girl who’s now wearing her coat, looking so small in them.

Ryujin grins and returns to her previous spot, her small whiskers coming out ,distracting the confused girl for a moment. **“My name’s Ryujin. What’s yours?”**

**“Chaeryeong.”**

The conversation ends at that as Chaeryeong turns away, Ryujin not leaving her place as she already knows that Chaeryeong calling her was a sign that she didn’t want her to leave.

Not anymore.

And so she doesn’t.

She stays right beside the girl as silence overtakes them, Chaeryeong looking out at the city as it continues to go, and Ryujin just basking in the moment that they share.

 **“I mean it, you know.”** Ryujin says after some time, her eyes on the sun as it peeks over the horizon, like a child peeping from a door.

Chaeryeong turns and looks at her, confused on how this girl can start a conversation with her as if she knew her all her life. **“What?”**

Maybe Ryujin didn’t know her before. She didn’t know her all her life.

But she does now. And she wants to know her now and forever.

**“About you being beautiful.”**

Chaeryeong scoffs and looks down, not believing the girl beside her at least one bit. **“I’m literally all swollen and tear-streaked. This can’t be beautiful.”**

 **“Probably for you.”** Ryujin moves a bit to the back, angling her sight with the sun shining on Chaeryeong’s other side as it wakes up, its strong rays hitting Chaeryeong’s face, making her hazel eyes stand out, her skin a bit lighter than it was. **“This is the best view for me. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”**

And ever since she had ran away from home, a smile breaks out on Chaeryeong’s face.

* * *

 **“How long are you going to stay here?”** Ryujin tends to not like the silence, Chaeryeong thinks. It’s either that or she just has a lot of questions.

But still, Chaeryeong entertains her. It’s the least she could do for the short-haired girl after she had let her wear her coat.

 **“Until my heart mends.”** Chaeryeong isn’t entirely serious about her answer. Her heart can never mend that fast. She would have to stay here for months, even years if she had to stay here until her heart mends itself.

Ryujin knows it wasn’t a very serious answer, but she lets it slide.

She rides the flow.

 **“Hmm. Then I won’t leave until your heart gets to mend itself.”** Ryujin grips her journal, holding it out in front of her. A smile breaks out of her face when she realizes that she can finally write again. She can finally _live_ again. **“Even just a little bit.”**

 **“Why? Why are you going to stay?”** Until now, Chaeryeong had wondered how Ryujin found her and why she approached her. Sure, she found her beautiful, but that’s not enough to make her stay, isn’t it?

 _They_ always told her that she’s beautiful yet they left.

 **“People aren’t supposed to be alone in their hardest times.”** The short-haired girl pulls her out of her thoughts. **“Not because they would do something they’d regret in the future, but because I guess it would be nice for a person to see them going through that hard time and overcoming it. And being the first one to say that you’re brave. And you’re strong.”** Ryujin turns and gives Chaeryeong a smile, one that confuses the brunette when she feels this tingling feeling in her stomach.

 **“Aren’t you cold?”** Chaeryeong tries to change the subject after finding out that she has absolutely nothing to reply to that.

The short-haired gestures towards her. **“Having to wear a shirt and a pants is better than wearing a thin nightgown.”**

 **“We can share the coat if you want.”** Ryujin silently nods and joins her in the coat after Chaeryeong takes her arm of from one of the sleeves. Ryujin slips her arm in the empty sleeve and quickly pulls the coat to cover them both, her left shoulder bumping with Chaeryeong’s right one and she turns away so that Chaeryeong won’t see her blushing face.

Fortunately, Chaeryeong is distracted with something else.

 **“What’s in there?”** She points towards Ryujin’s journal.

Ryujin raises her journal with a proud smile on her face. **“My poems. My stories. My lyrics.”**

Ryujin turns to ask her muse something but she gets entranced again with the girl’s beauty, more so now that she’s super close to her.

She finally gets out of her trance when Chaeryeong turns and looks at her, raising her eyebrows at her as she waits for Ryujin to function again. **“D-Do you want me to read you one?”** Ryujin offers her journal. **“Since we’ll be here for a long time?”**

Chaeryeong smiles genuinely and moves closer towards the short-haired girl, secretly loving the warmth Ryujin gives off. **“Sure.”**

**“Okay. Let me tell you about the girl who hated thunders and lightnings and how she loved it.”**


End file.
